


Death in the Morning

by LectorEl



Series: Patience Verse [6]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Daniel al Ghul, Gen, Patience Janson-Summers, also known as Damian's clone, discussion of death and mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My uncle has stage IV cancer, and we all only found out recently. He's probably not going to be here next christmas. This is my coping mechanism. Expect the usual verse style to resume in the next fic.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Death in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> My uncle has stage IV cancer, and we all only found out recently. He's probably not going to be here next christmas. This is my coping mechanism. Expect the usual verse style to resume in the next fic.

Patience had been in Ra’s’ care for nearly two months by the time Christmas rolled around, and the sharp longing she has for Dallas surprises her. Christmas was one of her family’s major holidays, and this would be the first time she’d missed it since when she was twelve and hospitalized for an emergency surgery after a sudden onset case of appendicitis.

The door to her increasingly-less-temporary room was nudged open. “Grandfather said you were moping?” Daniel asked, raising a single eyebrow. (Patience hated him for being able to do that, just a little. She’d never had the skill.)

“Missing Christmas, mostly.” Patience shrugged, and stood to retrieve her photo album. She’d pulled the thing out more time in the past two months than she had in the entire year before. “The year I turned four, mom and dad started getting more involved in the neighborhood. Since then, we always had a party on christmas eve for all the poor northerners who’d gotten relocated down to Dallas by their employers. It was fun.”

“And christmas morning?” Daniel asked. Patience flipped to a new page in the album.

“We go down to the cemetery and visit the graves.” She turned the album toward him. “My grandparents aren’t really buried there, but mom and dad needed some place to mourn, so. Empty graves.”

Daniel shivered. “That’s a touch morbid.”

“Christmas eve is for the living. Christmas day is for the dead, and the dying.” Patience ran her thumb over the corner of a battered poloroid. “After the gifts are opened, and the clean-up starts. You say your thank yous, and start packing away all the pretty, glittering things you spent so long putting up.”

“True enough, I suppose.” They sat together in silence after that, flipping through the album.

Eventually, Daniel stood, stretching, and offered Patience his hand. “Come on. Grandfather and mother are both here. You should see the fireworks while you have the chance.”

Patience’s lip twitched involuntarily. “They get on that badly?”

“When I was nine, they quit eating together because important bases always ended up blowing up afterward.” Daniel grinned. “It’s _hilarious_.”


End file.
